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floppym at gentoo

Jun 24, 2012, 9:15 PM

Post #1 of 38 (359 views)
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grub:2 keywords

An official release of grub-2.00 should be coming pretty soon. I would
like to keyword this for ~amd64 and ~x86 shortly after it hits the tree.
I don't do much work on base system packages, so I would like some
advice on how to make this as smooth as possible.

My main concern is that many people probably have sys-boot/grub in
@world. If grub:2 is made visible, portage will install it, and will
remove grub-0.97 on the next depclean. This could be a little confusing,
but should not cause any immediate damage since the copy of grub-0.97
installed in the MBR and /boot would remain intact.

Is this worthy of a news item? Or I just blog about it?

Anything else I need to think about here?

Note: The Gentoo Documentation Project has indicated that they do not
want to add anything to the handbook until we are somewhat close to
stabilizing grub:2. That's at least a couple months away.

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ryao at gentoo

Jun 24, 2012, 10:35 PM

Post #2 of 38 (351 views)
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Re: grub:2 keywords [In reply to]

On 06/25/2012 12:15 AM, Mike Gilbert wrote:
> An official release of grub-2.00 should be coming pretty soon. I would
> like to keyword this for ~amd64 and ~x86 shortly after it hits the tree.
> I don't do much work on base system packages, so I would like some
> advice on how to make this as smooth as possible.
>
> My main concern is that many people probably have sys-boot/grub in
> @world. If grub:2 is made visible, portage will install it, and will
> remove grub-0.97 on the next depclean. This could be a little confusing,
> but should not cause any immediate damage since the copy of grub-0.97
> installed in the MBR and /boot would remain intact.
>
> Is this worthy of a news item? Or I just blog about it?
>
> Anything else I need to think about here?
>
> Note: The Gentoo Documentation Project has indicated that they do not
> want to add anything to the handbook until we are somewhat close to
> stabilizing grub:2. That's at least a couple months away.
>

I think it would be best to move sys-boot/grub:2 to sys-boot/grub2. That
should avoid confusion.

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heroxbd at gentoo

Jun 25, 2012, 2:10 AM

Post #3 of 38 (352 views)
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Re: grub:2 keywords [In reply to]

Mike Gilbert <floppym [at] gentoo> writes:

> My main concern is that many people probably have sys-boot/grub in
> @world.

How about a news item advising people to put sys-boot/grub:0 in their
world file to retain grub:0?

> If grub:2 is made visible, portage will install it, and will remove
> grub-0.97 on the next depclean. This could be a little confusing, but
> should not cause any immediate damage since the copy of grub-0.97
> installed in the MBR and /boot would remain intact.
>
> Is this worthy of a news item? Or I just blog about it?

mgorny at gentoo

Jun 25, 2012, 2:15 AM

Post #4 of 38 (350 views)
Permalink

Re: grub:2 keywords [In reply to]

On Mon, 25 Jun 2012 01:35:19 -0400
Richard Yao <ryao [at] gentoo> wrote:

> On 06/25/2012 12:15 AM, Mike Gilbert wrote:
> > An official release of grub-2.00 should be coming pretty soon. I
> > would like to keyword this for ~amd64 and ~x86 shortly after it
> > hits the tree. I don't do much work on base system packages, so I
> > would like some advice on how to make this as smooth as possible.
> >
> > My main concern is that many people probably have sys-boot/grub in
> > @world. If grub:2 is made visible, portage will install it, and will
> > remove grub-0.97 on the next depclean. This could be a little
> > confusing, but should not cause any immediate damage since the copy
> > of grub-0.97 installed in the MBR and /boot would remain intact.
> >
> > Is this worthy of a news item? Or I just blog about it?
> >
> > Anything else I need to think about here?
> >
> > Note: The Gentoo Documentation Project has indicated that they do
> > not want to add anything to the handbook until we are somewhat
> > close to stabilizing grub:2. That's at least a couple months away.
>
> I think it would be best to move sys-boot/grub:2 to sys-boot/grub2.
> That should avoid confusion.

If our plan is to replace grub1 with grub2 at some point, that seems
incorrect. In other words, if grub2 is 'natural progress' from grub1.

--
Best regards,
Michał Górny

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cardoe at gentoo

Jun 25, 2012, 8:19 AM

Post #5 of 38 (347 views)
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Re: grub:2 keywords [In reply to]

On Sun, Jun 24, 2012 at 11:15 PM, Mike Gilbert <floppym [at] gentoo> wrote:
> An official release of grub-2.00 should be coming pretty soon. I would
> like to keyword this for ~amd64 and ~x86 shortly after it hits the tree.
> I don't do much work on base system packages, so I would like some
> advice on how to make this as smooth as possible.
>
> My main concern is that many people probably have sys-boot/grub in
> @world. If grub:2 is made visible, portage will install it, and will
> remove grub-0.97 on the next depclean. This could be a little confusing,
> but should not cause any immediate damage since the copy of grub-0.97
> installed in the MBR and /boot would remain intact.
>
> Is this worthy of a news item? Or I just blog about it?
>
> Anything else I need to think about here?
>
> Note: The Gentoo Documentation Project has indicated that they do not
> want to add anything to the handbook until we are somewhat close to
> stabilizing grub:2. That's at least a couple months away.
>

Mike,

Since Grub Legacy and Grub 2 are slotted, Portage won't remove the
older version. Even if it removes the older one, everything necessary
is installed into /boot and the MBR already.

The best route forward would be to instruct people to use
grub2-install (but whatever the flag is to prevent MBR installation).
Have people generate their grub.cfg with grub2-mkconfig and then put a
chain loader into the Grub Legacy configs so that they can test Grub 2
and then once they test it tell them to install Grub 2 into the MBR
and remove Grub Legacy.

I'll gladly work with you on this. IMHO, it might be a good plan to
unmask and ~arch one of the release candidates with an aim to get Grub
2.0.0 fully released with docs.

--
Doug Goldstein

floppym at gentoo

Jun 25, 2012, 9:56 AM

Post #6 of 38 (353 views)
Permalink

Re: grub:2 keywords [In reply to]

On Mon, Jun 25, 2012 at 11:19 AM, Doug Goldstein <cardoe [at] gentoo> wrote:
> Since Grub Legacy and Grub 2 are slotted, Portage won't remove the
> older version. Even if it removes the older one, everything necessary
> is installed into /boot and the MBR already.

Portage will remove the older slot the next time the user runs emerge
--depclean unless sys-boot/grub:0 is added to the world file. I'm
looking for a good way to communicate this to the user.

How about this: For ~arch, we do an ewarn in pkg_postinst if grub:0 is
installed. For stable, we do a news item.

>
> The best route forward would be to instruct people to use
> grub2-install (but whatever the flag is to prevent MBR installation).
> Have people generate their grub.cfg with grub2-mkconfig and then put a
> chain loader into the Grub Legacy configs so that they can test Grub 2
> and then once they test it tell them to install Grub 2 into the MBR
> and remove Grub Legacy.

Yeah, I vaguely remember trying this when I first installed grub:2.
You can prevent the MBR installation by stubbing out the grub-setup
call. For example:

grub2-install --grub-setup=/bin/true /dev/sda

You would then load /boot/grub2/i386-pc/core.img just like a Linux
kernel from menu.lst.

If you (or anyone) wants to test and verify that this actually works,
that would be great.

>
> I'll gladly work with you on this. IMHO, it might be a good plan to
> unmask and ~arch one of the release candidates with an aim to get Grub
> 2.0.0 fully released with docs.

That sounds like a good idea.

mgorny at gentoo

Jun 25, 2012, 10:02 AM

Post #7 of 38 (347 views)
Permalink

Re: grub:2 keywords [In reply to]

On Mon, 25 Jun 2012 00:15:59 -0400
Mike Gilbert <floppym [at] gentoo> wrote:

> An official release of grub-2.00 should be coming pretty soon. I would
> like to keyword this for ~amd64 and ~x86 shortly after it hits the
> tree. I don't do much work on base system packages, so I would like
> some advice on how to make this as smooth as possible.
>
> My main concern is that many people probably have sys-boot/grub in
> @world. If grub:2 is made visible, portage will install it, and will
> remove grub-0.97 on the next depclean. This could be a little
> confusing, but should not cause any immediate damage since the copy
> of grub-0.97 installed in the MBR and /boot would remain intact.
>
> Is this worthy of a news item? Or I just blog about it?
>
> Anything else I need to think about here?
>
> Note: The Gentoo Documentation Project has indicated that they do not
> want to add anything to the handbook until we are somewhat close to
> stabilizing grub:2. That's at least a couple months away.

I guess you could prepare some docs already, and put them e.g.
on the Wiki. Then it would be a really good idea to release a news item
and point users to those information and inform them about possible
choices.

--
Best regards,
Michał Górny

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floppym at gentoo

Jun 25, 2012, 10:26 AM

Post #8 of 38 (350 views)
Permalink

Re: grub:2 keywords [In reply to]

On Mon, Jun 25, 2012 at 1:02 PM, Michał Górny <mgorny [at] gentoo> wrote:
> On Mon, 25 Jun 2012 00:15:59 -0400
> Mike Gilbert <floppym [at] gentoo> wrote:
>
>> An official release of grub-2.00 should be coming pretty soon. I would
>> like to keyword this for ~amd64 and ~x86 shortly after it hits the
>> tree. I don't do much work on base system packages, so I would like
>> some advice on how to make this as smooth as possible.
>>
>> My main concern is that many people probably have sys-boot/grub in
>> @world. If grub:2 is made visible, portage will install it, and will
>> remove grub-0.97 on the next depclean. This could be a little
>> confusing, but should not cause any immediate damage since the copy
>> of grub-0.97 installed in the MBR and /boot would remain intact.
>>
>> Is this worthy of a news item? Or I just blog about it?
>>
>> Anything else I need to think about here?
>>
>> Note: The Gentoo Documentation Project has indicated that they do not
>> want to add anything to the handbook until we are somewhat close to
>> stabilizing grub:2. That's at least a couple months away.
>
> I guess you could prepare some docs already, and put them e.g.
> on the Wiki. Then it would be a really good idea to release a news item
> and point users to those information and inform them about possible
> choices.
>

There is already an elog message referring users to the wiki:

http://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/GRUB2_Quick_Start

1i5t5.duncan at cox

Jun 25, 2012, 7:43 PM

Post #9 of 38 (346 views)
Permalink

Re: grub:2 keywords [In reply to]

Mike Gilbert posted on Mon, 25 Jun 2012 12:56:25 -0400 as excerpted:

> On Mon, Jun 25, 2012 at 11:19 AM, Doug Goldstein <cardoe [at] gentoo>
> wrote:
>> Since Grub Legacy and Grub 2 are slotted, Portage won't remove the
>> older version. Even if it removes the older one, everything necessary
>> is installed into /boot and the MBR already.
>
> Portage will remove the older slot the next time the user runs emerge
> --depclean unless sys-boot/grub:0 is added to the world file. I'm
> looking for a good way to communicate this to the user.
>
> How about this: For ~arch, we do an ewarn in pkg_postinst if grub:0 is
> installed. For stable, we do a news item.

Here's a bit of a different idea:

Changing the bootloader is really a profile level change. If appropriate
grub2-defaulted new profiles are created, and the old ones set to specify
grub:0 as their default bootloader and then deprecated, this will
automatically both provide the appropriate upgrade preparation required
hint, and allow users to upgrade on their own schedule during the usual
profile deprecation period.

Additionally, if there are continued issues with gcc building the old
grub, etc (as was complicating the gcc-4.6 upgrade), the old profile can
be set to mask new gcc, as well, thus providing additional encouragement
to upgrade for the new gcc, and allowing people to deal with that upgrade
at the same time, with their profile switch. As such, supporting the old
profiles during the deprecation period shouldn't be too bad, since slots,
version-ranges, etc, can be nailed down as necessary, and people will
automatically be prepared to deal with a bit of churn as they do their
profile upgrade.

Thinking back, that probably would have been the best way to handle the
baselayout-2/openrc upgrade as well, but that's rather behind us, now.

--
Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman

floppym at gentoo

Jun 25, 2012, 8:13 PM

Post #10 of 38 (350 views)
Permalink

Re: Re: grub:2 keywords [In reply to]

On Mon, Jun 25, 2012 at 10:43 PM, Duncan <1i5t5.duncan [at] cox> wrote:
> Mike Gilbert posted on Mon, 25 Jun 2012 12:56:25 -0400 as excerpted:
>
>> On Mon, Jun 25, 2012 at 11:19 AM, Doug Goldstein <cardoe [at] gentoo>
>> wrote:
>>> Since Grub Legacy and Grub 2 are slotted, Portage won't remove the
>>> older version. Even if it removes the older one, everything necessary
>>> is installed into /boot and the MBR already.
>>
>> Portage will remove the older slot the next time the user runs emerge
>> --depclean unless sys-boot/grub:0 is added to the world file. I'm
>> looking for a good way to communicate this to the user.
>>
>> How about this: For ~arch, we do an ewarn in pkg_postinst if grub:0 is
>> installed. For stable, we do a news item.
>
> Here's a bit of a different idea:
>
> Changing the bootloader is really a profile level change. If appropriate
> grub2-defaulted new profiles are created, and the old ones set to specify
> grub:0 as their default bootloader and then deprecated, this will
> automatically both provide the appropriate upgrade preparation required
> hint, and allow users to upgrade on their own schedule during the usual
> profile deprecation period.
>

Profiles do not set a "default bootloader" so I have no idea what you
are talking about.

Installing grub:2 does not replace grub:0 until the user actually runs
grub2-install, so you can already upgrade on your own schedule.

mgorny at gentoo

Jun 25, 2012, 8:53 PM

Post #11 of 38 (346 views)
Permalink

Re: Re: grub:2 keywords [In reply to]

On Tue, 26 Jun 2012 02:43:47 +0000 (UTC)
Duncan <1i5t5.duncan [at] cox> wrote:

> Mike Gilbert posted on Mon, 25 Jun 2012 12:56:25 -0400 as excerpted:
>
> > On Mon, Jun 25, 2012 at 11:19 AM, Doug Goldstein <cardoe [at] gentoo>
> > wrote:
> >> Since Grub Legacy and Grub 2 are slotted, Portage won't remove the
> >> older version. Even if it removes the older one, everything
> >> necessary is installed into /boot and the MBR already.
> >
> > Portage will remove the older slot the next time the user runs
> > emerge --depclean unless sys-boot/grub:0 is added to the world
> > file. I'm looking for a good way to communicate this to the user.
> >
> > How about this: For ~arch, we do an ewarn in pkg_postinst if grub:0
> > is installed. For stable, we do a news item.
>
> Here's a bit of a different idea:
>
> Changing the bootloader is really a profile level change. If
> appropriate grub2-defaulted new profiles are created, and the old
> ones set to specify grub:0 as their default bootloader and then
> deprecated, this will automatically both provide the appropriate
> upgrade preparation required hint, and allow users to upgrade on
> their own schedule during the usual profile deprecation period.

No-no-no. I don't want profiles suddenly installing grub on my system.

--
Best regards,
Michał Górny

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1i5t5.duncan at cox

Jun 25, 2012, 9:04 PM

Post #12 of 38 (346 views)
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Re: grub:2 keywords [In reply to]

Mike Gilbert posted on Mon, 25 Jun 2012 23:13:09 -0400 as excerpted:

> Profiles do not set a "default bootloader" so I have no idea what you
> are talking about.

I could have sworn there was a virtual/bootloader or some such, that was
a part of @system and that thus would have likely had a default in the
profiles packages file, but either there was but it's long gone, or I'm
mis-remembering entirely.

So, ummm... interesting idea, but never mind!

--
Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman

vapier at gentoo

Jun 28, 2012, 10:12 PM

Post #13 of 38 (334 views)
Permalink

Re: Re: grub:2 keywords [In reply to]

On Tuesday 26 June 2012 00:04:35 Duncan wrote:
> Mike Gilbert posted on Mon, 25 Jun 2012 23:13:09 -0400 as excerpted:
> > Profiles do not set a "default bootloader" so I have no idea what you
> > are talking about.
>
> I could have sworn there was a virtual/bootloader or some such, that was
> a part of @system and that thus would have likely had a default in the
> profiles packages file, but either there was but it's long gone, or I'm
> mis-remembering entirely.

long gone when we threw out old style virtuals
-mike

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vapier at gentoo

Jun 28, 2012, 10:13 PM

Post #14 of 38 (339 views)
Permalink

Re: grub:2 keywords [In reply to]

On Monday 25 June 2012 00:15:59 Mike Gilbert wrote:
> An official release of grub-2.00 should be coming pretty soon. I would
> like to keyword this for ~amd64 and ~x86 shortly after it hits the tree.
> I don't do much work on base system packages, so I would like some
> advice on how to make this as smooth as possible.
>
> My main concern is that many people probably have sys-boot/grub in
> @world. If grub:2 is made visible, portage will install it, and will
> remove grub-0.97 on the next depclean. This could be a little confusing,
> but should not cause any immediate damage since the copy of grub-0.97
> installed in the MBR and /boot would remain intact.
>
> Is this worthy of a news item? Or I just blog about it?
>
> Anything else I need to think about here?

do we have automatic migration/updating in place like with grub1 ? that was
the biggest reason i didn't unleash it for automatic installing on people's
systems.
-mike

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1i5t5.duncan at cox

Jun 28, 2012, 10:35 PM

Post #15 of 38 (335 views)
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Re: grub:2 keywords [In reply to]

Mike Frysinger posted on Fri, 29 Jun 2012 01:12:38 -0400 as excerpted:

> On Tuesday 26 June 2012 00:04:35 Duncan wrote:

>> I could have sworn there was a virtual/bootloader or some such, that
>> was a part of @system and that thus would have likely had a default in
>> the profiles packages file, but either there was but it's long gone, or
>> I'm mis-remembering entirely.
>
> long gone when we threw out old style virtuals -mike

Thanks. I'm /not/ going senile and "remembering" things that were never
there, then! Relief! =:^)

--
Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman

floppym at gentoo

Jun 28, 2012, 10:59 PM

Post #16 of 38 (338 views)
Permalink

Re: grub:2 keywords [In reply to]

On Fri, Jun 29, 2012 at 1:13 AM, Mike Frysinger <vapier [at] gentoo> wrote:
> On Monday 25 June 2012 00:15:59 Mike Gilbert wrote:
>> An official release of grub-2.00 should be coming pretty soon. I would
>> like to keyword this for ~amd64 and ~x86 shortly after it hits the tree.
>> I don't do much work on base system packages, so I would like some
>> advice on how to make this as smooth as possible.
>>
>> My main concern is that many people probably have sys-boot/grub in
>> @world. If grub:2 is made visible, portage will install it, and will
>> remove grub-0.97 on the next depclean. This could be a little confusing,
>> but should not cause any immediate damage since the copy of grub-0.97
>> installed in the MBR and /boot would remain intact.
>>
>> Is this worthy of a news item? Or I just blog about it?
>>
>> Anything else I need to think about here?
>
> do we have automatic migration/updating in place like with grub1 ? that was
> the biggest reason i didn't unleash it for automatic installing on people's
> systems.
> -mike

No, the grub2 ebuild does not automatically install the files in /boot.

grub2-install performs this step, and must be run by the user. It also
installs the MBR and embeds the core image in unused disk sectors.
This way the MBR/core image is always kept in sync with the files in
/boot/grub2.

I don't really see a way to reliably call grub2-install from the
ebuild, and I think this would be a bit unfriendly to the user anyway.

rich0 at gentoo

Jun 29, 2012, 3:28 AM

Post #17 of 38 (335 views)
Permalink

Re: grub:2 keywords [In reply to]

On Fri, Jun 29, 2012 at 1:59 AM, Mike Gilbert <floppym [at] gentoo> wrote:
>
> I don't really see a way to reliably call grub2-install from the
> ebuild, and I think this would be a bit unfriendly to the user anyway.
>

Please don't. We don't auto-install grub during the initial install,
so we have NO idea how users have set up grub1. I'd rather not try to
automate the grub2 migration. For all we know they aren't even using
it to boot.

Interesting - it looks like I don't even have grub "installed" - the
hardware on my current box has probably changed twice since I
installed Gentoo on it so an install-once thing like grub that is
safely tucked away in an unmounted /boot probably got out of sync.

I'd think that a typical Gentoo user would want some control over
their grub installation. A good guide and a news announcement of the
upcoming change probably would be sufficient.

Rich

vapier at gentoo

Jun 29, 2012, 8:32 AM

Post #18 of 38 (338 views)
Permalink

Re: grub:2 keywords [In reply to]

On Friday 29 June 2012 01:59:37 Mike Gilbert wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 29, 2012 at 1:13 AM, Mike Frysinger <vapier [at] gentoo> wrote:
> > On Monday 25 June 2012 00:15:59 Mike Gilbert wrote:
> >> An official release of grub-2.00 should be coming pretty soon. I would
> >> like to keyword this for ~amd64 and ~x86 shortly after it hits the tree.
> >> I don't do much work on base system packages, so I would like some
> >> advice on how to make this as smooth as possible.
> >>
> >> My main concern is that many people probably have sys-boot/grub in
> >> @world. If grub:2 is made visible, portage will install it, and will
> >> remove grub-0.97 on the next depclean. This could be a little confusing,
> >> but should not cause any immediate damage since the copy of grub-0.97
> >> installed in the MBR and /boot would remain intact.
> >>
> >> Is this worthy of a news item? Or I just blog about it?
> >>
> >> Anything else I need to think about here?
> >
> > do we have automatic migration/updating in place like with grub1 ? that
> > was the biggest reason i didn't unleash it for automatic installing on
> > people's systems.
>
> No, the grub2 ebuild does not automatically install the files in /boot.
>
> grub2-install performs this step, and must be run by the user. It also
> installs the MBR and embeds the core image in unused disk sectors.
> This way the MBR/core image is always kept in sync with the files in
> /boot/grub2.
>
> I don't really see a way to reliably call grub2-install from the
> ebuild, and I think this would be a bit unfriendly to the user anyway.

grub1 doesn't seem to have a problem auto-updating itself. why is grub2 any
different ?
-mike

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floppym at gentoo

Jun 29, 2012, 9:11 AM

Post #19 of 38 (334 views)
Permalink

Re: grub:2 keywords [In reply to]

On Fri, Jun 29, 2012 at 11:32 AM, Mike Frysinger <vapier [at] gentoo> wrote:
> On Friday 29 June 2012 01:59:37 Mike Gilbert wrote:
>> On Fri, Jun 29, 2012 at 1:13 AM, Mike Frysinger <vapier [at] gentoo> wrote:
>> > On Monday 25 June 2012 00:15:59 Mike Gilbert wrote:
>> >> An official release of grub-2.00 should be coming pretty soon. I would
>> >> like to keyword this for ~amd64 and ~x86 shortly after it hits the tree.
>> >> I don't do much work on base system packages, so I would like some
>> >> advice on how to make this as smooth as possible.
>> >>
>> >> My main concern is that many people probably have sys-boot/grub in
>> >> @world. If grub:2 is made visible, portage will install it, and will
>> >> remove grub-0.97 on the next depclean. This could be a little confusing,
>> >> but should not cause any immediate damage since the copy of grub-0.97
>> >> installed in the MBR and /boot would remain intact.
>> >>
>> >> Is this worthy of a news item? Or I just blog about it?
>> >>
>> >> Anything else I need to think about here?
>> >
>> > do we have automatic migration/updating in place like with grub1 ? that
>> > was the biggest reason i didn't unleash it for automatic installing on
>> > people's systems.
>>
>> No, the grub2 ebuild does not automatically install the files in /boot.
>>
>> grub2-install performs this step, and must be run by the user. It also
>> installs the MBR and embeds the core image in unused disk sectors.
>> This way the MBR/core image is always kept in sync with the files in
>> /boot/grub2.
>>
>> I don't really see a way to reliably call grub2-install from the
>> ebuild, and I think this would be a bit unfriendly to the user anyway.
>
> grub1 doesn't seem to have a problem auto-updating itself. why is grub2 any
> different ?
> -mike

As far as I can tell, grub:0 only half-way updates itself; there is a
large ewarn telling the user that they must take action to install the
new version in the MBR. This seems a bit broken to me.

rich0 at gentoo

Jun 29, 2012, 11:08 AM

Post #20 of 38 (333 views)
Permalink

Re: grub:2 keywords [In reply to]

On Fri, Jun 29, 2012 at 12:11 PM, Mike Gilbert <floppym [at] gentoo> wrote:
> As far as I can tell, grub:0 only half-way updates itself; there is a
> large ewarn telling the user that they must take action to install the
> new version in the MBR. This seems a bit broken to me.

In what way. As far as I can tell I haven't gotten a grub upgrade in
the last 5-7 years. Since it is built static on amd64 (or at least it
was when I last installed it) nothing ever breaks. Maybe if I changed
my boot partition to a different filesystem it might have issues, but
grub just strikes me as one of those aint-broke-don't-fix things.

By all means push out the new version, make docs, ewarn the user and
all that. I just don't see the point in having something messing with
the MBR unless it is more likely to break if we don't.

Rich

floppym at gentoo

Jun 29, 2012, 11:29 AM

Post #21 of 38 (337 views)
Permalink

Re: grub:2 keywords [In reply to]

On Fri, Jun 29, 2012 at 2:08 PM, Rich Freeman <rich0 [at] gentoo> wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 29, 2012 at 12:11 PM, Mike Gilbert <floppym [at] gentoo> wrote:
>> As far as I can tell, grub:0 only half-way updates itself; there is a
>> large ewarn telling the user that they must take action to install the
>> new version in the MBR. This seems a bit broken to me.
>
> In what way. As far as I can tell I haven't gotten a grub upgrade in
> the last 5-7 years. Since it is built static on amd64 (or at least it
> was when I last installed it) nothing ever breaks. Maybe if I changed
> my boot partition to a different filesystem it might have issues, but
> grub just strikes me as one of those aint-broke-don't-fix things.
>

Right. I was contradicting vapier's statement that grub:0
automatically updates itself. It doesn't.

It does copy all of the images to /boot so that the grub shell can be
used to install an MBR image. grub:2 no longer has an interactive
shell and grub2-install must be used. Therefore, copying files to
/boot in the ebuild is completely pointless.

rich0 at gentoo

Jun 29, 2012, 11:38 AM

Post #22 of 38 (335 views)
Permalink

Re: grub:2 keywords [In reply to]

On Fri, Jun 29, 2012 at 2:29 PM, Mike Gilbert <floppym [at] gentoo> wrote:
> It does copy all of the images to /boot so that the grub shell can be
> used to install an MBR image. grub:2 no longer has an interactive
> shell and grub2-install must be used. Therefore, copying files to
> /boot in the ebuild is completely pointless.

Does grub2-install place any stage files where they need to be, or are
they no longer needed? I haven't experimented with it yet.

Normally grub1 needs to be able to find the stage2 file, and that has
to be on a partition the stage1.5 can read (I believe stage1.5 is in
the diagnostic cylinder - it only uses the files in /boot during
installation).

I'm not sure if grub2 completely eliminates the need to have a
"normal" partition somewhere, in a situation where raid+lvm+etc are
used.

Rich

ryao at gentoo

Jun 29, 2012, 11:51 AM

Post #23 of 38 (336 views)
Permalink

Re: grub:2 keywords [In reply to]

On 06/29/2012 02:38 PM, Rich Freeman wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 29, 2012 at 2:29 PM, Mike Gilbert <floppym [at] gentoo> wrote:
>> It does copy all of the images to /boot so that the grub shell can be
>> used to install an MBR image. grub:2 no longer has an interactive
>> shell and grub2-install must be used. Therefore, copying files to
>> /boot in the ebuild is completely pointless.
>
> Does grub2-install place any stage files where they need to be, or are
> they no longer needed? I haven't experimented with it yet.
>
> Normally grub1 needs to be able to find the stage2 file, and that has
> to be on a partition the stage1.5 can read (I believe stage1.5 is in
> the diagnostic cylinder - it only uses the files in /boot during
> installation).
>
> I'm not sure if grub2 completely eliminates the need to have a
> "normal" partition somewhere, in a situation where raid+lvm+etc are
> used.
>
> Rich
>

GRUB2 does away with the conventional stage files. It also wants a
special BIOS Boot Partition in order to function. That is where it
stores the equivalent of the stage2 bootcode. That is similar to
FreeBSD's bootloader.

Attachments:

signature.asc (0.88 KB)

rich0 at gentoo

Jun 29, 2012, 12:00 PM

Post #24 of 38 (335 views)
Permalink

Re: grub:2 keywords [In reply to]

On Fri, Jun 29, 2012 at 2:51 PM, Richard Yao <ryao [at] gentoo> wrote:
> GRUB2 does away with the conventional stage files. It also wants a
> special BIOS Boot Partition in order to function. That is where it
> stores the equivalent of the stage2 bootcode. That is similar to
> FreeBSD's bootloader.

Now, that should make for a fun migration! Fortunately I do have a
separate boot already, and I guess I can be daring and overwrite it in
place and trust in grub2 to still find the kernel elsewhere.

Those without a separate boot and without any free space are likely to
find this to be painful. Resizing partitions isn't exactly
risk-free...

Rich

floppym at gentoo

Jun 29, 2012, 12:01 PM

Post #25 of 38 (337 views)
Permalink

Re: grub:2 keywords [In reply to]

On Fri, Jun 29, 2012 at 2:38 PM, Rich Freeman <rich0 [at] gentoo> wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 29, 2012 at 2:29 PM, Mike Gilbert <floppym [at] gentoo> wrote:
>> It does copy all of the images to /boot so that the grub shell can be
>> used to install an MBR image. grub:2 no longer has an interactive
>> shell and grub2-install must be used. Therefore, copying files to
>> /boot in the ebuild is completely pointless.
>
> Does grub2-install place any stage files where they need to be, or are
> they no longer needed? I haven't experimented with it yet.
>
> Normally grub1 needs to be able to find the stage2 file, and that has
> to be on a partition the stage1.5 can read (I believe stage1.5 is in
> the diagnostic cylinder - it only uses the files in /boot during
> installation).

grub2 eliminates the stage_1_5 files. Instead, a "core" image is built
by grub2-install.

Here's how it works.

1. grub2-install copies all grub modules to /boot/grub2. This can be
any file system readable by GRUB.
2. grub2-install calls grub2-mkimage which combines any modules
necessary to access /boot into core.img.
3. grub2-install calls grub2-bios-setup which installs boot.img into
the MBR and embeds core.img into the sectors immediately after the
MBR.

>
> I'm not sure if grub2 completely eliminates the need to have a
> "normal" partition somewhere, in a situation where raid+lvm+etc are
> used.

You do need a filesystem that grub2 can access through some
combination of modules, and an area in which to embed core.img.

The grub2 manual has a pretty good explanation.

http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/html_node/Installing-GRUB-using-grub_002dinstall.html
http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/html_node/BIOS-installation.html
http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/html_node/Images.html

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